pax prime

PAX Prime kicks off in Seattle this weekend and we’re happy to hear that a number Xbox Live Arcade will be on display. Over at the Microsoft booth, alongside big hitters like Halo 4 and Gears of War: Judgement, visitors can check out upcoming XBLA titles State of Decay, Happy Wars, the as yet unannounced Crash Course 2 and upcoming multiplayer racer Avatar Motocross Madness. Microsoft will also have all the winners of this year’s Dream Build Play competition. The Indie Megabooth will also be worth a visit as they’ll be demoing a number of indie games, including some hotly anticipated XBLA games such as Charlie Murder, Mark of the Ninja and Super Time Force.  XBLA Fans will be attending the event which runs August 31 to September 2, so be sure to pop back for all the news. Hit the jump for a list of games confirmed as playable at the Megabooth.

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Sega has announced it will bring nine titles to the Penny Arcade Expo (better known as PAX Prime) later this month – one of which has yet to be announced. All nine titles will be playable at the festival. Hit the jump for the games we know will be there, some of which include forthcoming XBLA titles.

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The Indie Mega Booth at PAX East this year held a ton of content for us. We had previews from everything from Charlie Murder to Runner2 to Super Time …
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Minicore Studios’ Laika Believes will be released episodically in three chunks, the developer has revealed. Staring a space-traveling dog and set in a Soviet-dominated world, the game was always planned to be a Metroidvania-style platformer, and the team feels that releasing it over the course of three episodes will allow it to dedicate more time to crafting levels of an appropriate scope for such a game while also getting content to gamers earlier than originally planned. Minicore is currently targeting spring 2013 for the game’s debut episode, with the other two set to hit the market place “within the following year.”

The studio’s latest blog post states that the focus of development will rightly be placed on “massive, nonlinear levels, choice-rich skill trees, and game mechanics.” All are elements that the team supposedly was looking to work into Laika Believes from the start; however, there were concerns internally that the enormity of those undertakings would end up being too much for the small studio to successfully juggle under a more traditional release strategy.

Supposedly the game already contains “natural break points,” allowing the devs to easily transition into the episodic format. Improved pacing and the ability for players to discover new sections of Laika Believes at their own pace are also components of the experience that Minicore thinks it can more deftly integrate into its title without the pressure of having to deliver the full experience in one release.

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When Xbox Live Arcade launched in 2004 on Microsoft’s debut console, six titles well-known for their arcade roots appeared on the service at a fraction of retail cost. After Xbox Live Arcade re-launched on Xbox 360, the “Arcade” titles being released had a meager size limit of 50MB and retained the trend of being quick, shallow experiences. Today, some downloadable titles earn more critical attention than major blockbusters and may even reach Microsoft’s mandated size limit of 2GB.

“Now is an excellent time for high-quality, original, specific, relatively low-priced games, and I think this will continue for the foreseeable future,” said Greg Kasavin, writer and designer at SuperGiant Games. “Though it’s very difficult to make games, it’s never been easier due to the digital platforms and free tools out there these days.”

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Good news to any Behemoth fans who plan on attending some upcoming trade shows. The Behemoth has revealed plans to show off more of their next game, BattleBlock Theater. According to a blog post over on The Behemoth’s site the dev has refrained from showing the Story mode until now because they weren’t sure it would fit with a trade show environment.

They have decided to finally pull back the curtain however, excited to show everyone the collaborative gameplay. We have listed the handful of places The Behemoth will be showing off the mode below and hit the jump for some (small) screenshots of the game cinematics.

PAX East (Boston, MA) March 11-13th

Tokyo Anime Fair (Tokyo, Japan) Business Days- March 24-25th; Public Days March 26-27th

Comic Con International (San Diego, CA) July 21-24th

PAX Prime (Seattle, WA) August 26-28th

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